Word: 90s
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Name. Villon was born Gaston Duchamp. He took on the name "Jacques Villon" back in the '90s, when he was painting in secret on Montmartre and trying to convince his father, a stern notaire, that he was really attending law school. Two brothers and a sister eventually followed Jacques to Montmartre. One of them, a sculptor, called himself "Du-champ-Villon" but Suzanne and Marcel (Nude Descending a Staircase) Duchamp braved whatever wrath was left in their disappointed father and painted under their own names...
Enchantment (Goldwyn; RKO Radio), a film version of Rumer Godden's novel Take Three Tenses, is a tear-squeezer which shuttles back & forth between blitz-time London and the gay old '90s. The link is an aged general (David Niven) come home to dream-and to warn the young 'uns against making the same mistakes he did. This leads to so many flashbacks that Enchantment might have sent its audiences into St. Vitus' dance, had it not been for Cameraman Gregg Toland, who completed the picture a few weeks before he died (TIME...
Toland's subtle transition shots make the jumps seem as smooth as cold cream. Sample: in the '90s, Niven's older sister (Jayne Meadows) stands in the hallway of their house holding a large brass key. He has just sworn never to touch it again (or enter the house) as long as she lives. The camera narrows its focus to the key; the key turns in a lock-in the hand of Niven's grandniece (Evelyn Keyes) half a century later...
...livelier passages of this tale are all in the '90s and have to do with waltzes and schottisches, gay guardsmen and ruffly romance. When the old general harrumphs his warnings to his niece, the advice seems wasted on a relatively insipid pair (Keyes and Farley Granger). Niven and his lost sweetheart (Teresa Wright) steal the show so completely that in the end it becomes a plea for the past tense, on almost any terms...
...18th Street has a dusty, comfortable, behind the scenes look; it is littered with circus costumes, antlers, decoy ducks, a trumpet, a mandolin, a pair of pink garters. Photographs of archaic Greek statues share the walls with theater posters, cutouts of full-blown society belles of the '90s, and shiny dragoon helmets...